The Great Gatsby

When The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, very few people besides Fitzgerald himself believed it would ever become an American classic. It garnered mixed reviews and mediocre sales, with fewer than 24,000 copies in print during the author’s lifetime. It wasn’t until five years after Fitzgerald’s death, when the U.S. military distributed 105,000 copies to service members in WWII that the book began to build steam and popularity. Why do you think it finally struck a chord? How you think The Great Gatsby transcended its underwhelming reception to become such a strong contender for the Great American Novel? What do you think it says about the USA?

In the century since The Great Gatsby was published, the mythology of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a Jazz Age icon, a glamorous reveler, and one-half of a social power couple has only grown stronger. How does this popular view of Fitzgerald inform your reading? Do you believe it’s possible to separate your reading experience from what you know about the life of the author? Why or why not?

Numerous scholars, including Keath Fraser in his 1979 essay “Another Reading of The Great Gatsby” and Edward Wasiolek in his 1992 essay “The Sexual Drama of Nick and Gatsby,” have argued for a reading of the novel in which Nick Carraway is gay. Proponents of this theory cite, in addition to plenty of other homoerotic language, the scene in Chapter 3 in which Nick attends a party with Tom and his mistress, Myrtle. Nick leaves with a Mr. McKee and ends up in his bedroom, with Mr. McKee only wearing his underwear. Some read just Nick as gay, while others consider Gatsby equally repressed. Do you agree with either of these theories? Why or why not? If true, how would this affect the modern American literary canon?

Which character strikes you as the most contemporary? The most old-fashioned? Why?

In 2000, Carlyle V. Thompson, an assistant professor at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, NY, presented an argument that Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby as a pale Black man who passed as white. Evidence cited includes: Gatsby wears his hair trimmed short, owns 40 acres and a mansion Discussion Questions O T OO T O T T TT OU UT T O O O O O T O O U T (as opposed to 40 acres and a mule), changed his name from Gatz, and tells Nick that his family is dead. As Thompson wrote in his paper, “The word ‘dead’ is significant in that those light-skinned black [sic] individuals who pass for white become symbolically dead to their families.” Does any part of this theory ring true to you? Why or why not? How might this reading lend greater gravitas to the events of the novel?

Gatsby-themed parties, with flapper costumes and overflowing coupe glasses, are still wildly popular in mainstream culture. In what ways do these parties misread the morality and overarching themes of the novel? What similarities do you see between the way people behave today and the way people in Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan’s circles behaved?

Writer and journalist Kathryn Schulz wrote of Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship as “one part nostalgia, four parts narrative expedience, and zero parts anything else -- love, sex, desire, any kind of palpable connection.” Fitzgerald himself admitted that “I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy.” Yet, over the years, readers have interpreted the novel as a testament of thwarted love, enduring passion, and steadfast devotion. Why do you think this story has gained its romantic reputation? How does it compare to the contemporary representations of romance in literature today?

There is no doubt that The Great Gatsby has remained so popular because of its importance in high school classrooms and curriculums. Why do you think this book is so impactful for young people? Do you believe the lessons and themes of this novel remain true for people coming of age today? In what ways has the novel become irrelevant?

The female characters in The Great Gatsby -- Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker -- defy conventional morality and are even unlikable. Why do you think that is?

Rosa Inoncencio Smith wrote that while The Great Gatsby is often considered a story about the American Dream, “it is also a story about power under threat, and of how that power, lashing out, can render truth irrelevant.” In what ways do you observe this in the novel? How do you see these insights about power in our current society?